Evil weevils

culpepper

Why not use the flour anyway?
If I found weevils, I'd sift them out with a sieve if they were big enough.
Most flour is cooked into a food item and the heat would surely sterilise the food anyway.
Sometimes I think people are too squeemish. Medieval housewives must have had weevils in their flour all the time and the human race didn't die out.

suzukibabe

I've just made a victoria sponge and some iced fairy cakes.
Before reading this thread i new nothing about these little creatures and from now on i will be looking very carefully for any signs of movement in my flour, and i've ate 3 of the fairy cakes that i've made :eek:

Leonie

sallywl wrote:

I agree, we have a few, gave the hall where we kept seeing them on the wall a thorough hoover, had one or 2 a day after now they have gone ... if not they are hiding....
anyone know where they come from?!

Carpet beetles tend to come indoors when windows are open in the summer - then find a cosy nest of warm clothes to lay eggs in. When the larva (woolly bears) hatch out they start munching on any natural fibre they can find.

The beetle looks like a small ladybird, but not red and black.

http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/beetle6.htm

shows a photograph.

catherineblack

I've worked out that i have an infestation of weevils in my hall cupboard - caused by bird seed and peanuts that were left open. I spend 4 hours yesterday hoovering, bleaching, spraying RAID and generally cleaning out. There are now no foodstuffs in the cupboard. It is impossible to get all the nooks and crannies in the cupboard - it is huge and full of holes, etc. This morning i found several bugs again. They are tiny, but it took so long to clear out i can't face it again. I've sprayed them, but it stinks! How long before they go away? Any advice please?
Thanks

debtworrier

Years and years ago I was on a walking holiday and I'd taken along some dried food left over from the previous holiday. I made up the meal and was sitting in the field happily munching when I noticed a beetle in my pan. I thought it had just 'dropped in for dinner' so flicked it out and carried on eating.

It was only when I'd discovered several more beetles that it dawned on me that they couldn't all be jumping in right at the moment, but by then I'd eaten half the meal, and I was darn hungry having been backpacking all day, so I ate the rest, and suffered no ill effects.

Mind you, after checking the rest and seeing little holes bored in the packets I couldn't bring myself to use the rest, so I had to divert to a village and re-stock!

kippers

I think you have pscocids. I found them in my hall, behind our coats on an outside wall and on my pantry shelf. In my case I know they are down to humid conditions.

I had them in my first house in 1989 when i used to dry things on radiators and rarely had my heating on (as i was young free and single then and was always out). The council had to come and pesticide my house in the end as they were in every room on walls/carpets/books/clothes etc...but i was never there so i didn't know i was sharing my house with them until it was too late. At this time the council said i had probably bought them in on a packet of cereal from the supermarket and gave them perfect conditions to breed.

Since then i have always checked for them and all my food is in air tight containers. But we have been trying to save money over the last 2 or 3 months and i have started to dry clothes on the radiators and our heating is rubbish anyway (saving for new c/h system) but we have only been having the heating on 2 hours a day. We have had loads of problems with condensation and mould growing on outside walls in hall and bedroom.

Just after xmas i noticed sme psocids having a party on my hall window sills. I obviously went into panick mode and realised its down to the humid conditions in my house.

We bought a dehumidifier and i washed the walls that had mould on, with bleach. I sprayed the sills with a pesticide and washed all the hats & coats on a 60 degrees wash and put anything that couldn't be washed in the freezer for 24 hours.

We now keep the dehumidifer on all day and have the heating on for longer which seems to help reduce the humid conditions but it doesn't help our bank account!

Yesterday was the first time i couldn't find any in my hall after my daily 'mite' inspection so i am winning. However, i did find some yesterday on the window in my pantry...so here we go again!

I am now paronoid about psocids!...i read every artical on the internet that i can find and i will win the battle again!....Wish me luck!

debtworrier

Actually I quite like woodlice (although if you see more than a couple it can signal problems with damp woodwork, I believe.)

Did you know woodlice were here before the dinosaurs?

catherineblack

Thanks kippers - that sounds right. I've phoned environmental health and they cannot deal with pscoids -but a local pest control company charge £40 for a clean out/spray. If things don't get better by weekend I think i'll give them a call. Thankfully it's not as bad as ur first experience with them - ugh - they are horrible! I'm hoping the ones i found today are the residue of yesterdays clear out.

kippers

No, having looked at loads of council websites they don't seem to come out to domestic homes anymore (thank goodness they did all those years ago for me).

You can get rid of them yourself but it does take time and i don't know about you but i find it quite distressing. All the info i've read says it can happen in clean or dirty houses, but i still feel embarrassed to mention it to anyone..thank goodness for this website!

Let me know how you get on.

margarita555

Hi, just thought I'd mention that many years ago I found some weevils in a bag of flour in my cupboard. I now keep flour in the fridge with a plastic bag over the flour wrapper and haven't had any since.